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Questions Answered About Jupiter's Red Spot

November 14, 2013 /0 Comments/in /by

The red spot is one of the most mystical things in the solar system. A massive storm capable of engulfing two or three Earths should have ended a few centuries ago. But it's still here. Pedram Hassanzadeh, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, and Philip Marcus, a professor of fluid dynamics at the University of California, Los Angeles, believe they may be able to explain this mystery. Their work also suggests that ocean eddies and star and planet formation […]

Are Dark Matter Tiny Black Holes?

November 14, 2013 /0 Comments/in , /by

Dark matter, which is unseen but makes up approximately 25 percent of the universe, is the most mysterious thing yet. Scientists still haven't figured out whether dark matter consists of particles or larger objects. There's a consensus that dark matter is a new type of particle that has very little interaction with everything in the universe, including gravity. But even the most powerful particle accelerators […]

Sounds of Silent Space

November 13, 2013 /0 Comments/in /by

We see it all the time in space movies during battle scenes—laser sounds, ship explosions. Since space is empty, there's nothing for sound to travel through, so even if these things actually happen, they'll be silent. Imagine those scenes as silent. But space isn't actually silent. Just as we know it. With plasma vibrations, electromagnetic vibrations, radioactive vibrations, space has its own music. […]

Saturn's Shadow

November 13, 2013 /0 Comments/in /by

After months of anticipation, we now have Cassini's image. This image was taken on July 19th, when the Cassini spacecraft was 1.2 million km away from Saturn's rings, as seen from the naked eye. The image covers an area of 651,591 km. All of Saturn's rings, including the E ring, are included in this image. Besides Saturn, which is behind the Sun, we also see Mars, Venus, the Moon, and […]

Stunning Scenes from Young Stars

November 13, 2013 /0 Comments/in /by

ESO astronomers have obtained the best images yet of the strange clouds around the star cluster NGC 3572. The new images show how these clouds of gas and dust have strange bubbles, curvatures, and unusual features known as elephant trunks, caused by stellar winds expelled from hot young stars. Most stars do not form singly, but rather […]

Dark Energy and Cosmic Acceleration: A New But Already Collapsed Idea

November 12, 2013 /0 Comments/in , /by

Dartmouth College researchers have argued in a new study that the controversial accelerating expansion of the universe may be an illusion. Their findings don't explain cosmic acceleration; rather, they suggest there's nothing going on. They suggest our solar system is at the center of the universe and there's no dark energy. The 2011 Nobel Prize was awarded for the discovery that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. This discovery also suggests that three-quarters of the universe […]